This copy of the second volume of Bertha von Suttner’s novel Die Waffen nieder! is from Alfred Nobel’s own library. The book was published in 1889 and made Bertha von Suttner one of the main representatives of a growing peace movement. Bertha von Suttner was Alfred Nobel’s secretary during a short period, and they became friends. Their conversations on peace are likely to have influenced how he expressed his intentions with the Nobel Peace Prize in his will. von Suttner received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

This equipment was used by Wolfgang Ketterle in experiments to create “Bose-Einstein condensates”, which only occur at extremely low temperatures. To the left is one of the coils first used in the experiments in 1996, which was cooled by water through the tubes. In the middle is an electronic control panel built by the researchers. It was installed between the experimental apparatus and a computer to protect against water failure in the cooling of the coils. To the right is an atomic beam shutter in two parts, used in the experiments in 1994–2001. Wolfgang Ketterle donated the equipment to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2001.

These books contain the accounts from a nitroglycerin factory in Fredriksberg outside Helsinki. The factory was established by Robert Nobel in 1865. When Alfred Nobel began his attempts to launch nitroglycerin internationally as an explosive, it must have seemed natural to approach Russia and Finland, which was a grand duchy in the Russian Empire. Parts of his family still lived there. Robert Nobel’s wife Pauline was from Helsinki, and the family were residents of the city around 1865. Like his brother Alfred and his father Immanuel, Robert Nobel was involved in the early production of nitroglycerin and built a factory in Pasila outside Helsinki in 1865. However, the attempts to launch nitroglycerin in Finland failed. Robert Nobel moved to Sweden, where he was periodically the director of the nitroglycerin plant in Vinterviken outside Stockholm. The books were donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Hans Nobel in 2002.

Overcoming obstacles is an inevitable part of both scientific work and life in general. This is how David Baker describes a pair of glasses and a broken ski pole: “The orange glasses and the broken ski pole both symbolize overcoming adversity. I had an eye injury several years ago that made it impossible for me to look at computer screens; I was in despair about how to work for a month, when I discovered that the orange glasses solved the problem. I wear them when I give presentations, and so they have almost become part of my persona—I often get as much positive feedback about the glasses as the content of the talks! I am an avid backcountry skier, and I have broken many ski poles in the backcountry and still had to make it back to the starting point, which I obviously have so far—they not only represent overcoming adversity but my love of the mountains where I spend almost every weekend year round.” David Baker donated the glasses and the ski pole to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.

The large, red part of the model is the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. The blue and green parts represent synthetic proteins developed by David Baker and his team. These proteins bind tightly to the spike protein and have proven to prevent the virus from infecting animals. The proteins have not yet undergone the required testing for use on humans. David Baker donated the model to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2024.

Boken Mekaniken i dess användning vid konster och handtverk har tillhört Immanuel Nobel. Boken är en svensk översättning av ett originalverk på tyska av den österrikiske fysikprofessorn Andreas von Baumgartner. När boken trycktes 1842 var Immanuel Nobel verksam i Sankt Petersburg i Ryssland. Han arbetade där med tekniska projekt inom flera olika områden och drev en mekanisk verkstad. Kanske skaffade han boken vid sin återkomst till Sverige vid slutet av 1850-talet, men han kan också ha använt den i Ryssland. Han lärde sig aldrig ryska utan klarade sig med svenska under sina 20 år i Ryssland. Boken anskaffades av Nobelprismuseet 2008.

This fountain pen belonged to Ivo Andrić and accompanied him throughout his literary practice. It symbolises his social and artistic commitment and is a reminder of the importance of the written word. The pen was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by the Belgrade City Museum in 2025. The Belgrade City Museum manages the museum of Ivo Andrić’s estate that was founded after he died, according to his last will.

This spoon was used by Andrei Sakharov in the 1980s during the time he was banished to Nizhny Novgorod (then called Gorky). Sakharov was a physicist but had been a human rights advocate since the 1960s. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his efforts. The Soviet authorities prevented him from going to the award ceremony. To hamper his work, he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod in 1980. The apartment where he lived was under constant surveillance from across the street. Apart from visits from his wife, Yelena Bonner, he lived alone for long periods, cooking for himself. This traditional Russian wooden spoon was a utensil he used daily during his exile, for instance when he fried food in a Teflon pan, so as not to scratch it. One dish he liked to make was a kind of curd that he fried lightly, because he preferred hot food. He also used the spoon to make scrambled eggs. The spoon was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by the Andrei Sakharov Foundation in 2025.